Business Traveller Asia-Pacific Edition March 2017

I haven’t got a natural head for heights, so leaning over the edge of Victoria Falls and gazing into the boiling chasm already has my heart racing. Then I spot a double rainbow crisscrossing the gorge below just as something nibbles at my feet and I feel a surge of adrenaline. There’s nothing like a magical moment combined with a near death experience to really feel alive. The aptly named Devil’s Pool is the ultimate thrill-seeker’s infinity pool. It’s just off Livingstone Island, the place where the Scottish missionary turned explorer Dr David Livingstone first glimpsed the falls.You can only visit it in the dry season – September to December – when the water level drops enough to expose the rocks at the top of the falls. The buzz of sitting on…

The position of airline cabin attendant was not a woman’s job in the early years of commercial aviation. In 1922, Britain’s Daimler Airway hired the first “cabin boys”, who served no refreshments but whose presence added a comfortable formality to a flight. For a while this continued, as few people believed women were suitable for work in aviation. In 1930, however, a registered nurse named Ellen Church persuaded Steve Stimpson, manager of Boeing Air Transport (the predecessor to United Airlines), to hire female flight attendants, believing that a girl with training as a nurse would do a better job looking after passengers on a plane. Including Church, eight nurses were hired and the“sky girls”were paid US$125 a month to fly a minimum of 100 hours. Their initial flight was on a Boeing…